Uncharted
by Hipster Blood Ritual
Summary: The bomb explodes as Sherlock's bullet hits it, blowing John and Sherlock into an adventure of Vikings, dragons and eel sushi. Who else will end up in this nightmare?
1. One: John

_As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes in the land called Berk.  
><em>  
>Anyone observing this scene would have seen me, crouched against the wall, head bent down, looking like someone who should have been dead. I had just barely escaped death, and I could still feel its cold hand around my lungs.<p>

Despite the crushing sensation of helplessness, I kept my eyes and ears open. The banter between Sherlock and Moriarty treaded quietly around the pool. Sherlock's hand was steady, pointing the gun unwaveringly at the other man.

I didn't pay too much attention to that, though. I paid attention to the little red dot, shining on the back of Sherlock's jacket. One precisely timed _wink _from Moriarty and my best friend could be splattered over the floor.

There I was, crouched against the wall, preparing for a leap into the path of a bullet to save my friend. I just had to watch Moriarty's face, look for that signal...

But then Sherlock glanced at me. And the whole situation rearranged itself. It was a quick glance, no more than a second. But I knew what he was thinking.

Moriarty was a danger, not just to Sherlock, or me, or even London. He was a danger to the entire world. Sherlock and I were insignificant, really, compared to the disaster he could orchestrate. If we both died while bringing him down, it would be worth it.

So I nodded. And Sherlock brought the gun down from its sights on Moriarty's head to point at the bomb.

The time it took for his finger to pull the trigger was long enough for the world to be created and destroyed several times. It was certainly long enough for me to change position. By the time the end of the gun exploded, I was in the air, hurling myself into Sherlock, into the pool.

He didn't move, went limp in my arms. I felt the explosion behind us and I breathed in before the waves of sound and fire pushed us further through the air.

A crushing whiteness enveloped us. I couldn't do anything. All my senses were overloaded. All I could see and hear was rushing white. I think it was so loud, my hearing had shut down.

All I was really conscious of, at that moment was the fear of not surviving this. And then the fact that we hadn't hit the water in the pool yet.

I knew time was going slowly, but _that _slowly? No, that wouldn't work. I might have tried to open my eyes to see what was going on, or maybe to check if we were both dead already, or something.

Either way, I couldn't see anything, due to either the whiteness of the explosion, or that my face was buried in Sherlock's black jacket.

I exhaled. Then we hit the water.

We must have sunk about ten feet. The significance of that wasn't even apparent, even when my lungs almost burst from trying to get to the surface. Sherlock was a lot heavier than he looked. He was also extremely awkward to carry.

My head finally broke the surface, but it was either too bright to see anything or my vision was badly damaged from the explosion.

The thoughts whirled around my head with no order. I think I first subconsciously realized something was wrong when my feet hit the muddy bottom of the pool. Somewhere in my brain, it registered that pools didn't have muddy bottoms.

That didn't matter as much as getting Sherlock out of the water, though. He seemed to have doubled in weight but I dragged him and myself out of the water.

I bent over him to check if he was still breathing, or if I needed to administer CPR. My numb fingers felt for his wrist, or his neck, I'm not positive.

My blurry eyes saw the impossible, my fingers felt the impossible at least a minute before my brain finally caught up.

It wasn't Sherlock collapsed on the sand next to me.

It was a great leathery black dragon.


	2. Two: Sherlock

_As taken from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes on the land called Berk and on becoming a dragon._

This pool was not a place for John. Perhaps in the daylight, with a family, he could be found here, but not like this. Not like this.

He was terrified. The green jacket hung off him, comically huge. Moriarty's words came out of his mouth. He pronounced them all so carefully.

I didn't know how this situation was going to play out. That was the scariest part. I knew there were thousands of possible outcomes, and a lot of them ended in death, but I couldn't think through them all in that instant.

My mouth went on autopilot as I talked to Moriarty, my mind far too occupied with thinking up ways to keep myself and John alive. Despite some people's short-sighted judgements, I do actually value being alive. Most of the time.

So when John threw himself and his jacket-bomb on Moriarty's back, it took me a second to process the full meaning of the action. For a split half-second, I thought he had maybe come to the most likely scenario that I hadn't thought of yet, and was carrying through with the actions to make it happen. But then I remembered that this was John: stupid, loyal John who didn't think beyond the moment.

Then the sniper appeared, and John faded to the background as Moriarty continued outlining his plans. Time proceeded with no rules: first slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. I couldn't pay attention to everything.

And then Moriarty was gone. And then I was rushing over to John, tearing the jacket off him, sliding it away from us, watching him slide down the wall and crumble into a pile of relief. I took a breath, maybe two. My head cleared. It was time to fix this.

John thought we were out of danger for the time being. John, stupid John, was wrong. I knew Moriarty better than anyone. He would be back, along with his sniper friend, and he would be looking to fix things as well.

"Just kidding!" His idiotic, sing-song voice rang out across the water.

Maybe this would be the end of us. The little red light reappeared on the back of my jacket, even as I trained the gun on Moriarty again. A standoff, but one that was engineered for his victory. There was no way for us to win.

Except there was. I broke away from Moriarty's spider eyes and looked at the bomb, laying innocently on the floor between us. The light flashed, and I looked at John. It was only a glance, but it was long enough to see him nod.

That was all I needed. We were dying tonight, he and I. Smoothly, calmly, I brought the gun down to point directly at the bomb. Moriarty's look of surprise was absolutely worth dying for. I pulled the trigger.

Something heavy slammed into me from the side, just as the heat and light exploded outward from the semtex.

John.

Of course. He wasn't going to die without being a hero one last time.

_Idiot_, I thought rather fondly, as we flew through the air toward the pool. Didn't he know we were meant to die here? Heroism didn't matter, in the end. Nothing mattered, in the end.

The heat and light pushed us down and down and down. It seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long amount of time to hit the water in the pool. I couldn't hold my breath forever. I wondered if we were actually dead.

Hitting the water felt like hitting concrete. I was surely dead now.

* * *

><p>Somehow, I still woke up. That was annoying. I had planned for death. Life should not have been getting in the way.<p>

It was dark. Probably because my eyes were closed, but I didn't want to see life at the moment. I kept them shut.

It was dark, but I heard breathing. Also birds, but I assumed that was my bomb-addled consciousness. The breathing sounded like John-breathing. That was good. Death had decided to spit him back out too. Clearly we were bitter pills to swallow.

I opened my eyes, letting life into my optic nerves. It was very, very bright. I shut my eyes again. But not before I'd seen blue sky. And trees. And John, pulling himself away from me, holding his arm, dripping garishly red blood onto the white sand I was laying on.

_Wrong. _

I opened my eyes again, this time for real, letting life assault me for all it was worth. John crawled further away from me, and I heard ominous noises coming from behind a boulder. Like something big and dangerous was about to come out of the undergrowth.

Whatever it was, it wasn't going to get John. I scrambled to my feet and started to chase after him. The thing in the undergrowth came out.

Two things, actually. One was a boy, and one was a dragon.

I stumbled and fell. Practically on top of John, who shouted in fear. I never remembered him being so small. Shorter than me, yes, but never so small and fearful.

The boy and the dragon came closer. I looked down at myself.

Leathery black skin, short scaly arms and a long tail.

_Wrong. _

Panicking, I launched away from them all, into the undergrowth, into the woods. I didn't know what was happening.

_Wrong._


	3. Three: John

_As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes in the land called Berk._

First problem: my arm was bleeding so badly, I thought it was going to fall off. I used my jacket to keep a scant few blood cells inside, but there wasn't anything I could do for the pain.

Blood and pain were things I was relatively used to, though. The second problem I was facing was one I hadn't had much experience with.

I stared at the dragon for several minutes. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to think. I was fairly sure this was a painkiller-induced dream, and I would wake up at some point, wrapped in bandages in the hospital-but everything around me seemed much too real to be a dream.

I didn't actually get to speculate much further than that, because that was about when the dragon's eyes opened.

I backpedaled, tripping over the soft sand. I crawled as fast as I could away from it, not bothering to waste time standing up.

Not that it mattered anyway. My arm gave out a few steps away, and the dragon still surged to its feet, looking first toward the forest, and then at me. I looked into its eyes for half a second, and then it turned again toward the forest as two figures appeared.

The dragon moved closer, looking back and forth between me and the newcomers. I started feeling a little faint, either from blood loss, adrenal fatigue or a combination of both.

It tripped over a piece of driftwood in front of me and crashed to the ground, before leaping to its feet and skittering off into the undergrowth, claws flashing mere inches from me.

That was when I fainted. There's only so much I can deal with.

* * *

><p>It was nice to know I was alive, but I also wouldn't have objected to another five hundred years of sleep. Then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much to breathe.<p>

I groaned. _Ugh. _Where was I? The only thing I remembered was a handgun, and a steady point of red light on a black jacket…

"Hiccup! 'E's comin' 'round!"

Was that a Scottish accent? It hurt too much to think. I tried to open my eyes, but only managed a squint. I groaned again.

"Be quiet, Gobber!" Another voice, this one less accented and much younger, scolded. "Don't scare him!"

The room finally came into focus. I was in a small bed. There was an older man seated next to me on one side, and a teenage boy on the other side.

"You're finally awake!" The teenage boy said, more quietly. "I was worried you were dead, kind of."

"Not dead," I croaked. "Where am I?"

"Wow, that crash must have been bad. You're in Berk."

"Berk?"

"Yeah, Berk. It's in the coldest part of the sea in the loneliest part of the world."

I closed my eyes again. I really didn't want to deal with this at the moment.

"Where did you come from?" The boy asked me. "And where did you get your dragon?"

"Don't bother 'im, Hiccup," the older man said. "'E's got to get 'is rest."

I fell asleep again. Hopefully for another five hundred years. Maybe then I'd be able to figure out what had happened to me.

* * *

><p>It was several days before I felt well enough to get up out of bed. Those days were filled with vegetable and mutton soup, and the incessant questions of Hiccup, the teenage viking.<p>

I answered his question as best I could, given the fact I hadn't an inkling of what actually happened to me. Most of the time, I countered with questions of my own. Where was Berk? Could I get back to London somehow?

It was astonishing how little he knew about the world outside the little island. He'd never heard of London, and he couldn't tell me what was beyond the ocean surrounding Berk—although he told me his dream was to take his dragon, Toothless, and explore the world.

And there was the big problem. The dragons. They were big and very real. Hiccup told me the story of his friendship with Toothless, and how he had brought peace and harmony to the island of Berk. He talked about his friends, and about the different species of dragons that lived on Berk. He talked especially long about the Night Fury species, and how he had thought there was only one of its kind—but now there were two, because that was the kind of dragon that I had pulled up out of the lake.

Finally, finally, I felt well enough to push myself out of bed and out the door. The air outside was warm and beautiful, and bright dragons wheeled around in the sky above. It was a sight from a fantasy movie, or something out of a dream.

"They're perfectly harmless!" Hiccup reassured me, not for the first time. "Nothing to worry about." He whistled, then, and a black whirlwind of wings appeared from behind the house.

"Hey buddy!" Hiccup threw his arms around the dragon's neck. "John," he told me, "this is Toothless. Toothless, this is John."

I wasn't exactly sure how to meet a dragon, but I smiled and reached out my hand.

"He's my dragon," Hiccup said, as Toothless pushed his nose into my hand.

"Your dragon?"

"Well, yeah, like I told you. Everyone on Berk has their own dragon. Even you, even though I'm pretty sure you have amnesia because of the crash. But your dragon is out there somewhere! And we're going to go find it."

"We are?"


	4. Four: Sherlock

_As taken from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes on the land called Berk and on becoming a dragon._

First problem: I was a dragon.

I decided to accept that fact and move on. Some things were not worth puzzling out just yet.

Second problem: John and I had been transported to a place where there were dragons. And also Vikings. And who knew what else.

I supposed it would take a team of real scientists to explain how we got here, but maybe they'd explain how the bomb ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, and how John and I had just happened to jump through it.

That was, of course, stupidly unrealistic, but there wasn't much else in the way of explanation.

Really, I was more concerned about where John was, and if he was still alive or not. I was also vaguely concerned about Moriarty—did the blast from the bomb kill him? Was he expecting something like that from me? Was he prepared? What could he be doing if he wasn't dead?

Most importantly, how was I going to get back to London? And how could I stop being a dragon?

That brought me right back to problem one: I was a dragon.

I was, however, a very _nice _dragon. Black scales, huge wings and a long tail. I was an aerodynamic masterpiece, or at least I would be if I could get up in the air.

Becoming a quadruped, though, after a lifetime of walking on two legs is rather hard. I had to concentrate on walking, and how the wings and the tail affected my balance.

But if I was going to go find John, I'd have to walk or fly to get there.

I wondered vaguely if I might be able to fly. I could flap my wings. That's all flying was, really, wasn't it? That, and some simple updrafts and air movement.

I eyed the cliffs surrounding the secluded clearing. Tall, but not a high enough drop to kill me if I forgot to flap my wings or something. I wondered if I could get up on top of them.

Well, no one was watching to see my failure. I scrambled up the rocks with my new claws, catching my breath on the tallest one. I surveyed the valley below me. There was a nice patch of grass underneath the rock. Good for a landing pad.

I spread my wings and waited for an updraft.

I jumped lightly when I felt the warm air.

For a split second, my wings caught the air underneath them. I flapped once, propelling myself further into the air. It was _fantastic_.

Then my wing clipped the cliff face, and I rolled head over tail, landing on my nose in the valley below. Which hurt.

I didn't care very much, though. This was amazing! I was a dragon! I could fly! I had to go find John and tell him the news.


	5. Five: John

_As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes in the land called Berk._

"It's this way," Hiccup said, holding back a tree branch.

"Where are you taking me?" I ducked under the branch and straightened—we were in the middle of the dense forest that surrounded Berk.

"To find your dragon! We're going back to the clearing where I found you two. Remember?"

"I remember a dragon, yeah," I said, treading carefully over the moss on the ground. "But it isn't mine!"

"There's nowhere else it could have come from," Hiccup argued. "But maybe when you see it again, you'll remember."

"I doubt it," I said, but kept following him. The clearing was where Sherlock ought to be, if he'd ended up in this alternate reality with me.

After a few more minutes of dark trees and moss, Hiccup pointed at a pile of boulders. "There it is," he whispered.

"The clearing?" I found myself matching his volume.

"Yep." Hiccup squeezed through a tiny opening in the rocks. I followed close behind.

The little doorway opened up on a beautiful valley. There was a pond in the middle, with a sandy beach. Grass grew tall and green around the cliff that surrounded the valley.

"You climbed out of the pond." Hiccup pointed. "Carrying the dragon. You dragged it out, but your arm was hurt, so you started wrapping your arm in your shirt. And then you started crawling away from the dragon as fast as you could."

"I remember pulling the dragon out of the pond," I said, "but nothing after that."

"Well, you fainted pretty quickly," Hiccup said. "Toothless and I came over as fast as we could to try and help you, but the dragon saw us coming and ran off into the bushes."

"So how do you know the dragon's mine?" I asked. "It might have been trying to eat me."

"Humans aren't good for dragons to eat," Hiccup said. "We're all bone and skin. And I guess I don't really know if the dragon is yours, but it seemed like it knew you. It was trying to get near you—it was only me and Toothless that scared it away. We can at least find it and see if it needs help or something."

"I don't know if—"

Hiccup hopped down the boulders. "C'mon! We'll find it and then it can be your dragon anyway!"

I followed him down the boulders. "I don't really need a dragon, Hiccup."

"You don't want to fly? Have a best friend?" Hiccup started smacking the underbrush with a stick. "Come on out!"

"I already have a best friend," I said, looking nervously around for the dragon. "And I don't need to fly. I just want to—"

Hiccup made a frantic gesture and I turned around—coming face-to-face with the dragon.

It blinked.

"Don't move!" Hiccup whispered. "Pat its nose!"

"Great advice," I hissed, but I carefully reached up and put my hand gently on its nose. It blinked again, and sighed.

Something was very familiar about those grey-blue eyes.

It couldn't be possible, but—

"Sherlock?"


	6. Six: Sherlock

_As taken from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes on the land called Berk and on becoming a dragon._

It was good to see John again. I was glad he hadn't been killed by the Vikings, and I was doubly glad that he'd come to see me first. That saved me a lot of effort.

Of course, he was still scared of me, and didn't even really know it was me, so that was annoying. Also I couldn't _talk, _which was probably the most annoying thing of all.

But somehow, John recognized me. It half surprised me, how quickly he caught on and accepted that I was a dragon. But he's a writer at heart, so I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that much.

I nodded emphatically in response to my name. I wondered how he'd known it was me. Maybe the glint of sentience in my eyes? Maybe my great black wings reminded him of my favorite coat? Maybe—

"Sherlock, you—"

I dragged my mind back to the present moment. One of these days, my mind was probably going to eat itself, and that wasn't going to be pretty.

"You _are _Sherlock, right?"

_God, _this not-being-able-to-speak business was going to get tiring fast. I wanted to roll my eyes, and tell him that yes, of course I was Sherlock, there was no other explanation, _idiot. _

But instead, I just rolled my eyes.

"Knew it," John said, grinning. "Well, this is a pretty fix we've found ourselves in—" he stopped.

I cocked my head. What was wrong?

Suddenly, he was laughing. "You can't talk, can you?" He doubled over. "Sherlock Holmes, king of Sarcastic Remarks and Witty Comebacks, can't speak because he's been turned into a dragon!"

I narrowed my eyes and waited until he was finished.

"Sorry," he wheezed, "that's just too perfect. I kind of wish your brother was here."

He straightened up after a few more seconds, catching his breath. "Anyway. I'm glad you're here. I was getting worried. But—do you know what happened to us?"

That wasn't as easy to answer with body language. Obviously, I wanted to explain to John my theories about wormholes and planes of existence, or the fabric of reality, but I couldn't really communicate that through nodding and rolling my eyes.

Maybe there was another way, though. I turned toward the soft sand around the pond, and proceeded to transcribe my thoughts into the mud.

John peered around me for a minute, but when it was clear that the explanation was going to take a few minutes, he turned back toward the boy who had accompanied him in the first place.

"What's he doing?" The boy asked. "Is he drawing?"

"Writing, I think," John answered. "He has to explain to me why we're here."

"But you _do_ know him." The boy sounded triumphant. "Is he your dragon, then? Did you have amnesia, like I thought?"

I heard John struggling to explain, but then he just said "yeah, probably. When I saw him, I remembered everything."

"Good!" The boy smiled. "But why does he have to explain why you're here? If you were riding him somewhere and crashed here...isn't it your fault?"

"It's both of our faults," John said, after a second. "But he's telling me why we crashed."

"I didn't know some dragons could write." The boy hopped up and walked around to where I was busily scratching away in the sand. "Wait a second—that's writing?"

"It is," John confirmed. "Like I told you, we're from a _really _faraway place."

"I guess so." The boy raised his eyebrows. "Do they teach all the dragons to write, where you come from? Do you think Toothless could learn?"

"I have no idea," John said. "Maybe?"

I stepped back from my handiwork, and John bent over it, reading the scratches in the mud. I looked over at the boy, who looked evenly back at me.

"So you're Sherlock, right?" The boy came closer to me. "Nice to meet you. Toothless is my dragon, and he looks just like you. You're probably the same species."

John straightened. "That's interesting," he sighed. "But I suppose it's up to us to find our way home now. That's going to be fun."

I huffed. Fun.

"Well, we could all go back to the village," Hiccup volunteered. "It's starting to get a little dark."

He was interrupted by a whistling sound. I looked up into the sky, and saw a black object, hurtling down out of the sky. It was too small to be a dragon, but it was gaining on the ground pretty quickly.

It smacked into the sand, leaving a small crater around it. John and I bent over it.

It was a revolver. Specifically, the revolver I had used to set off the bomb.

That was interesting.

I looked up at the sky again, waiting to see what else would fall.

Nothing did, but what else might? If the wormhole in the pool building had swallowed up everything in the vicinity, there were a few other things that had yet to fall. Things that were more dangerous than a revolver.

There was somebody missing.

As if this couldn't get any worse.


	7. Seven: Mycroft

_As taken from the confidential files of Mycroft Holmes on the matter of Berk._

Worry is such a funny emotion. When I was little, I would worry obsessively about Sherlock. I would do my best to convince him not to go swimming, or walking by himself, because of the dangers he might face. My parents always told me that it was their job to worry about Sherlock, not mine. I only needed to worry about myself.

But I never stopped. The worry was always there, ticking away in the back of my mind like a clock.

That night, the night when everything changed, he sent me a text.

_Pool. Bomb.  
>I trust you can come collect our bodies?<br>Apologies for the inconvenience.  
>SH<em>

I'm not even sure _when_ he had time to write it, and I did _not_ appreciate his attempt at humor. But I put the government on hold. This was more important.

I only had one little brother, after all.

I was almost to the pool when the ground shook underneath me. A tremendous explosion echoed down the streets. I rounded the corner.

Flames poured out of the wreckage. Pieces of the building fell, shattering glass and flames on to the ground.

Sherlock had been inside that building.

It felt like my stomach dropped away, falling miles below my shoes. Heedless of the danger, I ran inside, calling for Sherlock, for John, kicking at rubble, looking, looking, looking.

At some point later, Detective Inspector Lestrade appeared, and we called and searched a while longer.

It was near the pool. A piece of black cloth, sticking out from under a piece of rubble. My heart stopped. Then Lestrade was there, and we were shoving the rubble away, and somebody slipped.

Whoever it was, the other tried to grab them. It only succeeded in toppling the both of us into the pool.

We hit the water after a deceptively long time. I wondered if my mind was affected by the shock of losing my brother.

I don't remember anything after hitting the water—probably because I had passed out.

It was nice, because I didn't feel anything but darkness.

When I woke up, John was looming over my head.

"Mycroft!" He looked relieved. "Sherlock, he's awake!"

Sherlock was here?

A huge black thing with eyes came into my field of vision. I didn't understand what it was. Its eyes were the same color as Sherlock's.

"Here," said John, and he helped me sit up. The black shape moved away, and I finally understood what it was.

I closed my eyes. This was impossible. This was impossible, and impossible things didn't exist. Therefore, by process of elimination, this was a dream.

It had to be.


	8. Eight: John

_As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk._

That was _weird. _Sherlock and I looked down at the revolver. He twisted his neck upward and stared at the sky for a while.

"What's the problem?" I asked, but he just shook his head.

"Well," said Hiccup, "we could go back to the village now."

Sherlock's nose pointed straight up in the air.

"What's that?" Hiccup asked, pointing. Something was falling out of the sky.

"Get out of the way!" I pushed Hiccup behind Sherlock, but the falling thing landed in the pond.

It made an enormous splash. Not unlike the one Sherlock and I had made when we fell.

"I bet it's a dragon," Hiccup said, pointing to the ripples. "Sometimes they fall out of the sky, if they're sick or tired or something."

"I don't think so," I said quietly, waiting.

Two heads surfaced. After a minute, I could recognize them. It was Greg Lestrade, pulling a limp Mycroft Holmes to shore.

"Oh my God." Without a second thought, I swam out to meet them, helping Greg drag the unconscious Mycroft to the beach.

"John," Greg gasped, sprawling out on the beach as well. "What happened? You were dead!"

"What?"

"We were in the pool building. There was a coat. A shirt. Sherlock's." He stopped for breath. "We fell, I think." His eyes bugged out. "We should be in the pool. The pool, in London. Where are we?!"

"In a place called Berk." I looked quickly at Mycroft, making sure he wasn't dead. "Try to breathe, Greg, you're probably—"

"What the hell is _that?" _

Sherlock had appeared.

"That's, uh—"

"A dragon!"

"Why is everyone so _surprised?" _Hiccup cried. "And why do people keep falling out of the sky, exactly?"

"It's kind of complicated—"

Mycroft gasped.

"Mycroft!" I scrambled over to him. "Sherlock, he's awake!"

The dragon loomed above his brother, looking closely into his eyes.

"Not so close, Sherlock." I waved him back and offered Mycroft my hand. "Here." I pulled him up to a sitting position.

He watched Sherlock a moment longer, and then his eyes drifted shut.

"Stay with us, Mycroft," I warned. "Don't pass out again."

Mycroft's eyes whizzed back and forth underneath his eyelids, deducing. "This is obviously just a dream," he said, to no one in particular.

"Sorry," I half-laughed. "But we've been here for three days. If it was my dream, I'd've woken up by now."

"The dragon—it's Sherlock, isn't it?" He didn't open his eyes.

"Uh, yes." I wasn't sure how the Holmes brothers were so good at accepting impossible things. It seemed out of character.

"How did this happen?" Finally his eyes opened.

"Sherlock had some ideas… he wrote them down over there, if you want to read them."

"I do." Mycroft got up slowly and headed toward Sherlock and his writing.

"John, could you explain where these guys came from?" Hiccup gestured to Greg and Mycroft.

"They're some friends from London," I said, trailing off.

"Right, well, I was hoping you'd explain in a little more detail." Hiccup raised an eyebrow. "I gathered that much."

"I promise we will," I said seriously. "But we've got to head back to the village soon. Mycroft hit his head or something, and I think Greg's in shock."

"Fine." Hiccup's eyes narrowed. "I'm holding you to that."

"I promise," I said again, watching him scramble up the hill towards the village.

I supposed a complicated story of a different world wouldn't be too hard for Hiccup to accept. He dealt with dragons after all. That discussion would happen tomorrow, though, or maybe the day after. There were more pressing matters on my mind right now.

Greg was still looking very much in shock. His eyes never strayed from Sherlock.

"Come on, Greg." I broke his line of sight. "You're safe for now, there's nothing to worry about. That's Sherlock—he's not going to hurt you."

"How do you know it's Sherlock?"

The dragon in question turned and shot the inspector a glare.

"Believe me, it is." I offered Greg my hand. "Let's go drown our worries in fine Viking ale."


	9. Nine: Greg

_As taken from the personal experiences of Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade on the matter of Berk. _

I let John haul me to my feet, and then followed him up and out of the little valley, leaving Sherlock and Mycroft behind.

This was _completely _confusing. "Do you mind, uh, explaining to me what happened to us?" I asked John, as he pushed our way through the forest.

"Sure," he chuckled. "I mean, it's basically right out of science fiction. We were sucked into a wormhole or something and came out in a different universe."

"Of course." I nodded. I was living some sort of weird adventure story. "Um, what exactly are we going to do about it?"

"I've no idea." John pointed us in the right direction. "But we can put Sherlock and Mycroft on that job. It's kind of lucky we're stuck with the two smartest people we know."

"I suppose so… how long do you think it'll take them to figure it out?" I was still worried. "People will think we're dead. We thought you and Sherlock were dead."

"I don't know." John shrugged. "Besides, time moves faster here. Sherlock and I were here for three days in the time it took you guys to join us."

"But if it takes Sherlock and Mycroft a long time to get us back to our, er, universe, it won't really matter."

"I guess we'd better start thinking up a good excuse for when we all come back, then." John smiled.

"What about everyone back in London?" I asked. "How are they going to deal with us being dead?"

"They can be sad, and then we'll come back." John pushed aside more branches, and we appeared in the village. "This is Berk," he said. "I guess it's home until we go home."

"It's…" I didn't really know what to say. What are you _supposed_ to say in a situation like that?

"John!" A teenage viking waved to us from the village square. "Over here!"

"What's going on?" John asked the viking.

"We're having a sort of "welcome to Berk" party for you, since you're finally out of bed—and your new friends are invited too. It's mostly because everyone wants to meet you."

"Wow, that's really kind of you!" John smiled. "Oh—Hiccup, this is Greg. The other guy is Mycroft, but he and Sherlock are still down by the pond."

"Nice to meet you." Hiccup nodded at me. "You and John were friends back in London?"

"We were," I affirmed. "And we still are."

"Okay." Hiccup turned. "I'm supposed to distract you while everyone sets up in the great hall. Let's go up the hill, and I'll make you food or tea or something, and you can explain how you all got here."

John and I followed him up the hill to one of the bigger houses in the village.

"His dad is the chief of the village," John explained.

"Hey Toothless!" Hiccup called, "there are more people!"

A big black shape dropped off the roof and bounced over to us.

"That's Toothless," John said, "Hiccup's dragon."

It looked just like Sherlock did as a dragon. It sniffed at me for a second, then at John.

"Well, go on, pet his nose," Hiccup encouraged. "He's not going to bite you."

I reached out my hand, and Toothless put his nose into it.

"He likes you," Hiccup grinned, and then ushered us into the house, dragon and all. I paused for a moment, looking out over the village. The ocean was bleak and grey in the gathering darkness, but the torches in the village looked kind of magical.

"Are there other villages?" I asked, as Hiccup closed the door.

"Some," he said. "Not many that are close by. It's rare to get visitors, which is why everyone's making such a big deal about you guys."

Hiccup sat us down at a big wooden table and dragged a kettle over the kitchen fire. "So, John," he said, "we have some time now. You can tell me about how you got here."

Toothless curled up under the table, like an enormous cat. I tried not to kick him.

John sighed. "Well, basically, we're kind of from… another world, if you know what I mean."

Hiccup nodded slowly. "I think so."

"So somehow, we all fell into a weird tunnel through time and space and ended up here, in Berk." John traced a winding tunnel on the table with his fingertip.

Hiccup shrugged. "Okay. I mean, the world is full of mysteries. Maybe when Toothless and I are exploring the world around Berk, we'll find a tunnel to another world that's different from both of ours."

"It's just not something we're used to," John said. "In our world, we always think we know everything, so when weird things happen, like tunnels through space and time, we're very surprised."

Hiccup laughed, then. "That's kind of stupid."

"It is," John allowed, smiling too.

"But when everyone fell into the pond from your world," said Hiccup, "they were all surprised by the dragons. I mean, I guess I can assume there aren't dragons where you come from, obviously, but then why do you know Sherlock?"

"Ah," said John, and was quiet for a moment. "That's kind of a stranger story."

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "There are strange things in the world. I'm used to it."

"Well," John hesitated. "Sherlock was also our friend back in London. I tried to save him during a huge explosion, but we fell into Berk instead. And then he, uh, changed into a dragon."

"So he was a person in your world, but he transformed…" Hiccup nodded, eyes wide. "That's why you were laughing about him not being able to talk and stuff. I was wondering if you went insane for a little while or something. But that's pretty amazing, actually. I wonder if there's a way I could be transformed into a dragon."

"He isn't really enjoying it," John laughed. "I think he'd be happier as a human."

"But imagine if you could change back and forth," Hiccup insisted. "From human to dragon and then back to human again. So you'd be able to talk, but you'd also be able to fly whenever you wanted."

"Can't you fly on Toothless?" I asked, breaking into the conversation.

"Sure." Hiccup nodded. "But someday I want to make a pair of wings for myself, so that I can fly on my own."

"That could be fun," John admitted. "But flying on the backs of dragons sounds pretty amazing too."

"Maybe Sherlock will fly with you," Hiccup said. "We could go on a Night Fury ride together. I bet Toothless would have fun with that. He hasn't even met Sherlock for real yet."

Flying with dragons wasn't really something I was interested in, if I was honest with myself. So I kept quiet. This whole thing was still a lot to take in. If I was completely honest, I really just wanted to be home in bed after a good day at work.

Instead, there were dragons, and I wasn't sure where I'd be sleeping tonight.

Adventure stories always leave out the real-life parts. I hoped Sherlock and Mycroft were doing their best to get us back to London. John seemed to trust them implicitly to figure out big problems, but I knew Sherlock, at least, was not infallible.

But unless I wanted to figure it out (not likely), I was trusting the Holmes brothers.

Adventure stories always ended up right, though. We'd make it back to London. Maybe we'd have to stay in Berk for a long time, but we'd have a happy ending.

Right?


	10. Ten: Sherlock

_As taken from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes on the land called Berk and on becoming a dragon._

"Come up to the village when you're done." John reached out to touch my head, but drew back his hand at the last minute. "See you there."

I nodded, not looking toward Mycroft until Lestrade and John had disappeared into the forest. When I did, he had his thinking face on.

I waited quietly until he shook his head, coming back into the present. Of course, I couldn't have waited any other way, due to my inability to speak.

"So," Mycroft began. "You've definitely ruled out any possibility of this being some sort of hallucination, correct?"

I nodded. I thought of myself as somewhat of an expert on determining whether or not a vision or experience was brought on by my imagination or other... substances. The fact that John, Lestrade and my brother were hallucinating along with me cemented the proof that this was actually happening.

"So there isn't any other way to explain this," Mycroft finished. "Save that it is, in fact, happening."

I nodded again.

"And you were the only one of us that... changed." Mycroft's mouth twitched up for a nanosecond. Long enough for me to see that he found this amusing.

I still hadn't quite gotten the hang of the claws and teeth, so I couldn't show him exactly what I thought of his reaction to my predicament. So instead, I just nodded. Again.

"You are completely incapable of speech." It wasn't really a question, just an affirmation.

Huffing out a breath of warm air, I nodded _again_. The annoyance was building up inside my chest, somewhere in the vicinity of my lungs. It felt like fire. I'd coughed up a fireball after my first flight, but I hadn't been quite conscious of it. It had been like sneezing. But I could _feel_ this fire. It was ready to blow up at Mycroft, because he thought this was _funny. _This was far from funny. He'd feel the same, if _he_ was a dragon.

But no, for some inexplicable reason, _I _was the one who'd been transformed. I would have thought it had to do with high intelligence, or just my genetic makeup, but Mycroft had effectively ruined that hypothesis. That's what he did. He ruined things.

"...the ones who are going to have to figure it out, I'd assume." Mycroft had been talking that entire time. As if he'd been expecting me to listen. "John and that incompetent officer aren't going to be much help. I don't see why you value John's input at all, he's just going to be a nuisance. What _have _you been doing here for the past, what, three days?"

I wished I was capable of giving Mycroft a nice show of teeth and claws and fire to properly convey my current mood toward him. But I was containing my emotions. I wasn't going to kill—

"Well?" Mycroft asked imperiously, interrupting my (un)charitable train of thought. "What _have_ you been doing?"

Carefully in the sand, I wrote 'studying'.

Peering over my shoulder, Mycroft sniffed. "Studying. Yourself? What about the culture here? The people, the customs? I don't suppose you know anything about that?"

'Ask John.' I wrote. _John isn't a nuisance, brother-mine, he knows more about this place than either of us. _

Mycroft seemed to arrive at that conclusion anyway. His turned up nose and another sniff told me that he was about as much annoyed with me as I was with him. Good.

"Exactly how do you plan on getting out of this disaster?" Mycroft asked me then.

I gave him a shrug. I hadn't come up with a single idea. (Physics: boring, except for ballistics and quantum encryption. I thought the weird space-time fabric multiverse stuff could safely be ignored. Except for now, of course, I knew it would have been well-worth my time to actually learn a little about it.)

The unbearably smug, 'older brother know-it-all' look crossed his face. Of course he would know all about the weird space-time fabric multiverse stuff. He probably had a bunch of scientists working on some top-secret science-fictiony spaceship or something.

"Well, I'll be able to figure something out," Mycroft smirked. "Just give me a week. Go and be social, figure out some dragon hierarchy."

I glared at him. He was getting more and more infuriating. Dragon hierarchy, indeed. He was going to get a very short, very fiery lesson on _dragon hierarchy _very soon.

"But more seriously," Mycroft said then, the smirk falling off his face, "do you think there's really any way back?"

He was back to the serious older brother persona. I shrugged, pretending I didn't care either way.

"We'll puzzle it out, I suppose." He turned his idiotic umbrella towards the village. "Meanwhile, do you think Vikings have tea?"


	11. Eleven: Jim

_From the top-secret files of James Moriarty on the confidential matter of Berk._

I wanted so desperately for Sherlock to know that I cared. It was for Sherlock that I had set up this game; it was for Sherlock I wrapped helpless old women and innocent children in bombs and set them ablaze. And it was for Sherlock that I kidnapped John Watson, to wrap in bombs and set ablaze as well.

I wanted Sherlock to not be bored. I wanted this puzzle to be one of the best ones he'd ever had the pleasure of solving. And then, once he was about to grasp the full intent and reach of my plans, I was going to win. That's why John had to be there. I wanted Sherlock to feel just a touch of the desperation and panic that he would inevitably feel, once I won. Once I beat him.

John was surprisingly, _disappointingly_ underwhelming. He was normal, it almost hurt to look at him. Perhaps he'd be more entertaining when conscious, but somehow I doubted it. That was unfortunate.

Either way, green was a good color for him. I exited the room, preparing for one of the best nights of my life.

It wasn't like I _hadn't _engineered the interaction so Sherlock had picked the pool as his choice for a meeting place, but it struck me again as such a lovely and _dramatic _place for this meeting to take place. The sounds would skitter across the surface of the water, echoing far above our heads. If someone happened to shoot a gun, that would echo too.

The interaction went as planned. _Perfectly _as planned. It was, frankly, disappointingly perfect. I even _left the room _for God's sake, trying to get the two idiots to do _something _entertaining—but to no avail.

That is, in fact, until Sherlock pointed his gun at the bomb.

That was better.

In the corner of my eye, I saw my dear Sebastian preparing to save me. Getting ready to hurl himself into me, into the pool, where we might be safer from the explosion.

I was sure John was getting ready to do the same for Sherlock. It would really just be a matter of whose dog was better at jumping.

Sherlock's finger tightened on the trigger, and the world turned upside down. It all happened fairly quickly, actually. I suppose a life of high-risk situations makes dying a little less melodramatic. I was glad for that.

Except I wasn't, because I was still alive enough that hitting the pool hurt as badly as it would have had I been splattered on a concrete floor.

* * *

><p>I came back to consciousness fairly quickly. Apparently Sebastian had managed to drag us out of the pool, and had collapsed afterward, unconscious as well. He was still lying there, clothes soaking wet. I noted dispassionately that he was still breathing.<p>

I tried to get on my feet, to see the destruction, the rubble, Sherlock's dead or dying body—but the feet I got up on were definitely not mine. There were four of them: short, stubby and green, and they only elevated me a foot off the ground. I also had what looked like a parrot beak jutting off my face into my field of vision. And a tail.

What _was _this? I turned around and around, trying to figure out what had happened. The answer was there, right in front of me, I just had to make the connection.

It started to come together, but then Sebastian woke up loudly and distracted me. He panicked, looking for my human form. I jumped up and down and made a squawking noise that murdered whatever was left of my dignity. But it caught his attention.

He looked at me with a mix of disbelief and disgust. It wasn't a very attractive look on him. In the sand I drew an arrow pointing to myself, with the letters J and M next to it. The mix of emotions on his face turned slowly into suspicion. I guess I would have been suspicious, too, if I was in his position, but it was annoying nonetheless. I managed an eye roll, and then, with the help of a few other choice phrases written in the sand, finally got him to nod in acceptance.

I pointed with my tail at the cliff faces that surrounded the valley, and he nodded gamely, seeing the caves hidden in the rocks. I wondered vaguely if I'd be able to fly up to them, but decided against it, for now. I wanted to get up to the caves with the least amount of problems we could afford. I wanted to get out from underneath the expanse of alien sky and away from the judging sun.

Soon, I'd have to figure out how to get back to my universe. Back to the dark rain of London. But if there was anything I'd learned during my years as a consulting criminal, it's that sometimes you just need to accept the way things are. There were times when it was absolutely necessary to determine the course of fate and to change the outcome of things, but this wasn't one of those times. I'd been shoved into this little universe, chances were that I'd find myself shoved right back into my own when the time was right.

For now, I was a dragon!

And I was still a dragon a day later, when, from my perch in the cave above the valley, I saw Sherlock Holmes and John Watson fall from the sky. And I was still a dragon, albeit a hungry and irritated one because Sebastian was late with his stolen food, when I saw Sherlock's brother and that incompetent Lestrade character fall from the sky.

Well, this _was_ going to be interesting.

* * *

><p><strong>NOTES<strong>

Long story short: I'm rewriting Uncharted. I was trying to be sneaky and just replace chapters, but since I'm approaching the story with far less stupidity than I did three years ago, the divide between the old and new chapters started to show a lot more. So I deleted all the old chapters.

Unfortunately, this means everyone who subscribed will be getting updates for chapters they've already read, which I'm sorry about. Although I've changed a few things, so maybe it isn't all bad.

Anyway, thank you, everyone, for all your support. We'll see how far I can get with the story this summer.


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